The view from the fifth floor of the Cianchette Building encompasses the area’s past, present, and future. To the south, deer often traverse fields that look much the same as they did a century ago. To the east, I-395 snakes across the land. To the west sits the one-year-old Dirigo Drive, and beyond that, on a clear day, Mount Katahdin stands guard on the horizon. The best view from that spot, some say, is a vision—one that would turn the Wilson Street-Dirigo Drive area of Brewer into a force for regional economic development. In this economic vision, the building anchors a 72-acre biomedical business park, the Brewer Professional Center. That, in turn, anchors a burgeoning new professional business corridor along Dirigo Drive, which helps provide the critical mass for further, potentially extensive, development on Wilson Street.
It’s all the product of cooperation among local companies— most prominently, Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and Cianbro—city and state officials, and local and national developers, aiming to bring new jobs, new people, and new dollars to the city, to Bangor, and beyond. With state approval, a second office building will soon rise at the Brewer Professional Center, housing Eastern Maine Medical Center’s new Cancer Care Center, as well as the Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health.
“This has the potential to mean big things for this whole area,” says D’arcy Main-Boyington, Brewer’s director of economic development. “This has a good chance to really transform the bio-med industry, make it a major industry here, and be something we can hold up there as a great success.”
The vision began simply enough. Following a period of massive growth, Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems was squeezed for space, spending thousands to rent offices around the area. In the late 1990s, former CEO Norm Ledwin started looking to build an office building. The goal was to open up space at EMMC’s main campus for clinical use, increasing efficiency at the hospital and throughout the system. Ledwin, EMHS officials say, also saw the potential for regional economic development in the project. Brewer’s economic development team, lead by Drew Sachs, was a big help.
“The city really helped us bring it all together,” says Ken Hews, executive vice president at EMHS. “Drew [Sachs, until recently Brewer’s director of economic development] is a real doer, a creative thinker. I really enjoyed working with him, his colleagues, and the city. I have to credit the city council, the mayor, the whole group. They understood the vision.”
In late 2002, the city, EMHS, and Pittsfield-based construction giant Cianbro teamed together to build the Cianchette Building. Brewer secured the land for a potential business park, and EMHS bought most of it. Cianbro won the construction bid, then worked out a 15-year lease with EMHS, after which EMHS will own the 143,000- square-foot building. The building opened in the spring of 2004.
The Cianchette Building’s construction was followed by an announcement by Governor John Baldacci last January, when he trumpeted the formation of the Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health (MIHGH), a cooperative venture of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, the University of Maine, and Bar Harborbased Jackson Lab. Gov. Baldacci also announced the creation of undergraduate and graduate programs in biomedical science at UMaine’s Bangor campus.
The MIHGH and the schools, the governor said, “will build on the strengths of Bangor and Brewer and surrounding towns . . . This effort, along with southern Maine’s successes, will provide the critical mass to create jobs and improve public health, create research and development capacity, and develop our healthcare workforce.”
Now, MIHGH may get its permanent location. Like the Cianchette, it may arise from EMMC’s ongoing need for more space. With patient visits to its campusbased CancerCare of Maine up 54% from 1998 to 2005, EMMC recently announced plans to build a $42-million, 92,500- square-foot cancer center at the Brewer Professional Center. It will be built, according to EMHS officials, if the hospital receives “certificate of need” approval from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services this spring.
Whether or not the second Brewer Professional Center building happens soon, the area around the center will almost assuredly see its share of retail and commercial development. Two new credit unions and a veterinary clinic already call Dirigo Drive home, and a host of developable parcels are for sale or lease along the city’s newest road. Meanwhile, the fields stretching between Parkway South and Brewer Professional Center are sprouting “for sale or lease” signs.
The city counts at least one developer in the area as a friend. The Brewer Economic Development Corporation owns several parcels on Dirigo. The nonprofit group of local business owners works toward smart development, and its resume includes deals with Wal-Mart and, in the city’s nearby industrial park, ZF Lemforder, Brewer’s largest employer.
